‘I beg your pardon – I did not know –’

Poirot smiled gently at him but with a reproving air.

‘I am afraid,’ he said, ‘that you are trespassing.’

‘Yes, I am sorry.’

‘You come from the hostel?’

‘Yes. Yes, I do. I thought perhaps one could get through the woods this way and so to the quay.’

‘I am afraid,’ said Poirot gently, ‘that you will have to go back the way you came. There is no through road.’

The young man said again, showing all his teeth in a would-be agreeable smile:

‘I am sorry. I am very sorry.’

He bowed and turned away.

Poirot came out of the Folly and back on to the path, watching the boy retreat. When he got to the ending of the path, he looked over his shoulder. Then, seeing Poirot watching him, he quickened his pace and disappeared round the bend.

‘Eh bien,’ said Poirot to himself, ‘is this a murderer I have seen, or is it not?’

The young man had certainly been at the fête yesterday and had scowled when he had collided with Poirot, and just as certainly therefore he must know quite well that there was no through path by way of the woods to the ferry. If, indeed, he had been looking for a path to the ferry he would not have taken this path by the Folly, but would have kept on the lower level near the river. Moreover, he had arrived at the Folly with the air of one who has reached his rendezvous, and who is badly startled at finding the wrong person at the meeting place.

‘So it is like this,’ said Poirot to himself. ‘He came here to meet someone. Who did he come to meet?’ He added as an afterthought, ‘And why?’

He strolled down to the bend of the path and looked at it where it wound away into the trees. There was no sign of the young man in the turtle shirt now. Presumably he had deemed it prudent to retreat as rapidly as possible. Poirot retraced his steps, shaking his head.

Lost in thought, he came quietly round the side of the Folly, and stopped on the threshold, startled in his turn. Sally Legge was there on her knees, her head bent down to the cracks in the flooring. She jumped up, startled.

‘Oh, M. Poirot, you gave me such a shock. I didn’t hear you coming.’

‘You were looking for something, Madame?’

‘I – no, not exactly.’

‘You had lost something, perhaps,’ said Poirot. ‘Dropped something. Or perhaps…’ He adopted a roguish, gallant air, ‘Or perhaps, Madame, it is a rendezvous. I am, most unfortunately, not the person you came to meet?’

She had recovered her aplomb by now.

‘Does one ever have rendezvous in the middle of the morning?’ she demanded, questioningly.

‘Sometimes,’ said Poirot, ‘one has to have a rendezvous at the only time one can. Husbands,’ he added sententiously, ‘are sometimes jealous.’